Data Science Corps to Improve the Quality of Life in Urban Areas

The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance—Jacob France Institute (BNIA-JFI) at the University of Baltimore will assist in the development of team-based data science corps consisting of undergraduate students from Computer Science, Information Systems, and Business majors. Students in the data science corps will gain both academic and hands-on experience through real-world data science projects. In this project BNIA-JFI will focus on the city of Baltimore as an exemplar for other cities in the US and across the globe. BNIA-JFI will collaborate with a number of government, industry, and community stakeholders in the city of Baltimore to integrate real-world data science projects into classroom instructions.

This project will be a collaborative effort with UMBC as the coordinating as well as implementing organization and the University of Baltimore (UB), Towson University, and Bowie State University as implementing organizations. BNIA-JFI will be a part of a team of experts with multidisciplinary academic expertise and complementary training experiences in parallel computing, data science, big data, cybersecurity, virtual reality, geospatial data analysis, and urban and regional planning. BNIA-JFI will support integration of real-world data science projects by 1) recruiting and introducing data science tools and techniques to undergraduate students at UB; 2) accelerating the adoption of advanced data science techniques, such as geospatial analysis for projects in urban communities through community-based real-world projects.  The project is funded by the National Science Foundation.